I stumbled across a fantastic new manufacturer and one of its very sweet integrated amps. The manufacturer is Jungson (
www.jungson.com) and they are engineered in Shengheng, China. They build amps, pre-amps, cd players and cables. At first glance, their products look like they are built in some exotic place where the average cost is a good years salary! However, the amp that I auditioned and purchased is the JA-88D. It is a pure class "A" amp which tests at 102 wpc into 8 ohms and 190 wpc into 4 ohms all pure class A. It weighs 75 lbs out of the box and 90 lbs. boxed. All parts are Wima, Black Gate, Nichicon Muse, WBT, etc. you get the point. The digital potentiometer is the same as the ones Rowland uses! Lists for $2500, no I didn't miss a zero! I purchased mine for $1750. Runs very warm but not for a class A amp. Also fully balanced and single ended! The packaging weighs nearly 20 lbs. It comes "draped" in red velvet which is a little garish but effectively protects the mirror finished aluminum front panel.
Sound with the XL's: Holographic beyond belief, imaging is superb, soundstage is deep and wide and way outside the XL's boundaries, bass is subwoofer deep. I sold my Primare amp and pre to buy this beauty and had a few $$$ left over. I listened to this amp with several other speakers...Red Rose, Gamut and Spendor. neither of these speakers could touch the XL/Jungson chemistry or should I say magic! Please feel free to ask me any questions about this terrific set up!
FYI: My equipment also consists of Music Hall Maverick SACD player, Audioquest King Cobra interconnects & Bedrock speaker cables. My listening consists of jazz, classical, pop-vocal, and mellow rock.
